Found this which is said to be a BAE 100m opv with the fat funnel removed and to skinnier ones fitted with a hangar in the middle with the space saved they fitted a open stern with spots for containers looks like a good layout but is it a BAE design? of course the pic shows more armament than needed but this layout with sensors and weapons talked about would be useful

Looks like something that was around during the C3 concept phase of S2C2…or perhaps an update on the Vospers design from that period. Either way, as you say, with a more appropriate armament fit that looks pretty much the, realistic, hull we need to be building in volume as a single-class auxillary cutter/minor war vessel. The three new ships wont be this of course as the point is just to get something useful off the funds we’d use for keeping the yards idle anyway…such an absurd position to be in as to defy credibility…but you live in hope that something like this pictured could perhaps be a ‘batch2’ of the initial 90m design.

Neptune

Face it, on any naval ship, there is lots of “unused” space If you look at the deck space of a Burke, how much of that surface is actually used for weapons systems? On the forward part there’s lots of space available next to the VLS that isn’t used, not to mention the two huge funnels and their footprint.

A lot of the empty weather deck space is used for things like vertrep receipt, RAS access or any number of topside routines alongside or underway. Weapons/sensor fit and arcs have to be sited such that these spaces are preserved otherwise even basic operations like storing ship or casevac (with a fouled chopper pad) become hideously difficult and inefficient evolutions. When you reduce that surface area with an arrangement like tumblehome it complicates deconflicting systems, clear arcs and topside handling requirements. If its an absolute necessity to go to tumblehome then maybe you accept that sacrifice, but, I dont see the absolute need to do so here.

If you look at loss of internal volume, the reduced crew and hence need for crew accomodation will already take a large part of the “lost” space on Zumwalt. The additional compactness of recent systems will also help with that.

Point taken, but, crew facilities generally need to be more lavish these days for recruitment and retention as well as to support the longer deployments escorts tend to undertake now. This may be an RN-centric view, but, USN crews are usually significantly larger than RN ones and they tend to be more oppulently catered for than our ships anyway….stories of ships having to turn round because the ice-cream maker was broken etc, etc!. Bottom line being that point about reducing space, generally, for very limited real gains.

The big guns do take a lot of space as well, so they didn’t really lose all deck space and hull volume.

Possibly here is the only significant notional advantage of the tumblehome, for this design, in that the main guns magazines get more space with that arrangement and the conventional hull with that space on 2 or 3deck could have been significantly larger. Designing a destroyer around two 6″ gun mounts though???.

Not sure what you mean with “instability in certain sea states”, either a hull is stable or not stable, a hull that is stable in certain sea states doesn’t exist.

Pitch behaviour is supposed to be very iffy running before a heavy swell with tumblehome and a corkscrewing effect can result…I’m assuming they have some form of roll stabilisation system fitted for a tall narrow hull with a fairly significant sail area on the superstructure!. For a ship that, presumably, needs to be a stable gun platform its an odd choice to my mind. SWATH and multihulls can exhibit unstable pitch and roll characteristics in quartering seas as well, as wave effect hits the different hulls at different times and intensities, so there definitely are examples where sea conditions impinge on hull performance.

I agree.

Why?.

I cant say I really understand the point behind the Zumwalt design. Naval signature attenuation is about a lot more than controlling RCS….in fact I’d say that RCS is a distant last in terms of the factors needing attenuation after emissions, acoustics and infra-red signatures. A design that introduces instability in certain sea states and reduces available deck space for combat systems just to get reduced RCS then doesnt fit my view of an advancement in naval design.

That doesnt mean there is anything wrong with placing a large and powerful radar system aboard the ship though. This is for exactly the same reason that the most stealthy warships in existence, SSNs, still mount hoofing great active sonar fits. That is that, sometimes, brute force IS the answer and that, if you are forced to emit, it usually means trouble is close aboard so you want the most capable sensor suite possible bolted somewhere appropriate in or on your hull!. In radar/missile terms CEC and SM-6 mean that it is entirely possible for a Zumwalt to prosecute an area-AAW engagement emitting on nothing more than a couple of low(ish) datarate TDL’s…no different than it would be for a late block Burke to do the same thing given CEC and -6 missiles in its cells of course.

I guess the bow shape is the wave of the future. Yacht “Puerto Banus”[ATTACH=CONFIG]222182[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]222183[/ATTACH]

Something of an irony seeings its a shape from the past…last fashionable on 19th century battleships if memory serves!

Sounds reasonable.Yet, China is very secretive about it’s Military Programs. So, the J-20 and J-31 could be near or even in production before the world even knew about it. Then take India’s lengthy history of fielding any major weapons system. Doesn’t look so good……..Just saying!

You must recognise the contradiction in your stance here Scot?. You state we may not know when one of these prototypes becomes an operational platform in squadron strength, but, you expect to be able to confidently predict that its qualities will render Rafale inadequate?. What are you basing these predictions of superiority on?.

Do you expect to see reliable, verifiable, public source data on the onboard/offboard sensor fusion in these fighters?. How about the capabilities of the wide area surveillance system these aircraft will plug into?. How about the level of training and competence that they have built up in employing LO types so as to maximise the advantage of those LO characteristics?.

Against this if India sends Rafale to sea does it take Meteor to sea with it?. What does that mean for Chinese support aircraft?. Does the IN CATOBAR carrier get E-2D…does a J-20/-31 LO profile work all-aspect against a powerful air search set like that?. Will Spectra datalinked between Rafales cue up an emitting J-20?.

Lastly you seem to be advocating, obliquely, F-35C for the IN….why would an F-35C purchase not be subject to the same “lengthy history of fielding any major weapons system” that the Indian defence procurement system is noted for?.

yes, my comments were also taking into consideration the Indian case..
since they operate a STOBAR, would a proposed F-35 sale to India focus on the B or C?

India has a STOBAR fighter already. If IN STOBAR is the evolutionary dead end that so many predicted, and that all the clamour for Indian CATOBAR CVN’s seem to foretell, then the short-deck option for F-35 is superflous. They’ll have enough MiG’s and, perhaps, the navalised local design to keep enough planes on the STOBAR decks to cover the near to mid-term. Pushing out beyond that…with a CATOBAR requirement…the C model would be the clear option, but, if Rafale is in local production it would have to be a surprise if the F-35 were to be considered at all?.

The problem is that in order to support Scooter’s claim you still need to have a cost breakdown. The concepts are not comparable, I agree. But what about cost of ownership, especially spares?

My point was not to prove that Vikra was cheaper to operate than Korean ships – only to show that Scooter had no idea what he was talking about.
I hope this clears it.

No it clears nothing unfortunately MSphere. You are trying to use pedantry to obfuscate the blatantly obvious and you are using the wrong stick to beat Scot with. All in fact that you are achieving is to demonstrate a total lack of comprehension, on your part, of what you are writing about. Cost of ownership of a ship powered by an 8 boiler steam plant will be significantly higher than a comparable diesel or turbine plant. This is simply because of the nature of the installation…you have so much more to go wrong with the steam plant. You have higher crew requirements…higher spares utilisation owing to the complexity and corrosive nature of the propulsive force….greater logistics overheads from the extra sparing required….etc…etc.

The tradeoff for this is exactly the performance noted above….steam IS powerful and will give you a fast ship. Legacy of the principle Soviet forward ASW doctrine…not much use for a slow ship in the prosecution phase of ASW hunting. It comes with a price though and a costing spreadsheet is not required if you do some basic research on ship propulsion.